


Awareness

by ObsessedtwibrarianOTB



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Flash Fic, Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 09:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6417610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsessedtwibrarianOTB/pseuds/ObsessedtwibrarianOTB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is aware, but he is not supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awareness

 

The water laps gently against his skin, chilling him to the bone. His wrists sting; he doesn’t know why. He opens his eyes and is shocked he can see: sand, water, sky, and…rope (?) wrapped around his arm. _Why??_ He tries to raise his head, but his body refuses to respond to his commands. Time passes, unmeasured, as he tries to understand his unusual circumstances.

A bird lands inches from his face. It pecks its beak into the water, once, twice. Its wings flutter; it flies off. 

He is aware, but he is not supposed to be. This has never happened before, but somehow he knows awareness is a very dangerous condition. He should not be able to hear the distant cry of birds, or feel the cool breeze blowing across his bare back, or the pain in his wrists (which he still can’t figure out). The rules explicitly forbid this. _Rules? What rules??_ He puts his brain to work— the one useful part of him at the moment—and tries to figure out how he knows there are rules, when he doesn’t even know what they apply to. 

A bird lands inches from his face. It pecks its beak into the water, once, twice. Its wings flutter; it flies off. 

He cannot let them know he is aware, and instantly his mind thinks, _“Who is ‘them’??”_ He is not sure, but somewhere in his subconscious he knows they are a threat. 

Since his present is painfully ambiguous, he focuses his attention in the direction of the past. _How did I come to be lying in water, no shirt, with a rope around my arm?_ There is a glimmer of memory dancing around the edges of his thoughts, but it’s as elusive as his ability to gain control of his limbs. 

A bird lands inches from his face. It pecks its beak into the water, once, twice. Its wings flutter; it flies off. 

 _Wait._ How many times has that bird landed in front of him?? His confusion increases exponentially, because some part of him understands that, in his current state, this repetition is _normal._

He focuses again on trying to recapture the moments just before he acquired awareness. Retrieving these memories is difficult, and he loses track of how much time passes, as well as how many times that damnable bird lands and flies off. 

A fragment of a memory finally surfaces. He sees himself inside a ship of some kind, with a machine gun in his hand and hiding. He is afraid, but determined to fulfill his mission, the nature of which eludes him in the present. The memory changes and he is plunging into frigid water, choking, panicking, and losing all sense of direction. His weapon is gone and he’s trying to swim with bound hands. Impossible. He’s going to die…again. In this past existence, he is petrified of failing, because to fail means only one more chance. He’s already used up all of his lives but one. 

The present crashes down on him as the truth finally illuminates itself: the next time he reanimates he must win or he will be _retired._ And retirement in his world is not a period of rest. It’s a fate worse than death. It’s the shame of failure in a world that demands victory through violence. Because in his world, death is entertainment; violence is its god. 

A bird lands inches from his f— 

“Un-pause game,” a loud voice announces into the stillness. 

He rises from the water and runs, a rope and chain dragging the ground behind him.

 

 


End file.
